Pensions & Investments gathered information for this report, published annually since 1974, in three steps.
Questionnaires were sent to more than 1,300 fund sponsors in P&I's database. The largest 1,000 were identified from completed questionnaires, follow-up phone calls and emails, and database searches.
Data for sponsoring entities that did not respond were culled from published annual or quarterly reports and Form 5500s filed with the Department of Labor. Morningstar Inc. provided source materials used as references to gather the most recent historical asset data for certain plans.
P&I's survey generally covers the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2019. In cases where no information was available from the fund, or the data were older than June 30, 2019, P&I calculated estimates to Sept. 30.
New questions that were added this year were asking whether DB or DC plans had an external cybersecurity vendor; whether DC plans contain or apply ESG principles within target-date funds; and whether DC plans' offer stand-alone retirement income options and if the investment lineup includes options with an ESG focus.
Dollar amounts generally are rounded to the nearest million; in certain tables and charts, they are rounded to billions. The aggregate asset mixes represent the weighted averages of all reported allocations for the respective funds.
All data in this special report are ©2020 Crain Communications Inc. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
